While not wishing to offend members of the high-IQ social club Mensa, I
decided many years ago that I would choose my friends based on very different
criteria than the ability to solve certain puzzles in a certain amount of time.

I don't quarrel with the need of some very bright people to find other bright
people to talk to. But I've never run out of people worth knowing and spending
time with in the ordinary course of my life, and I never felt the need to check
their IQ scores before deciding whether they were my friends or not.

Besides, there was always the fear that their IQ score would be higher than
mine.

Still, though I didn't join Mensa back when my brain worked well enough for
me to get in (which makes me wonder -- do aging members of Mensa have to
keep getting retested to make sure they still qualify?), I do appreciate their
puzzle books.

Ranging from chess problems to cryptic crosswords, from lateral-thinking
puzzles to a variety of games and crosswords for children, the Mensa game-book publishing program is terrific.

I just finished Fraser Simpson's 102 Cryptic Crosswords. Simpson authored
a series of small (eight squares by ten) cryptics for the New Yorker for a while,
and these follow the same pattern, with deft but solvable clues. In fact, while it
bears the Mensa Puzzle Book logo, this is actually a sequel to Simpson's earlier
(but now out-of-print) 101 Cryptic Crosswords: From the New Yorker.

Simpson also created or co-created several other puzzle books for Mensa (as
well as for the Sit & Solve toilet-puzzle book series), but I wish he'd get busy
and give me another book of cryptics.

Mensa and Sit & Solve aren't the only games in town, for those who like to
stretch their minds. One should never forget the variety of puzzles in Games
Magazine, of course. AARP has an excellent series of crossword books with
"To Keep You Sharp" in the titles.

Peter Gordon's two excellent series of gradually-more-difficult books, like Killer
Thursday Crosswords, have now made way for his equally delightful but not so
murderous Tasty Tuesday Crosswords,Delicious Wednesday Crosswords, and
so on. And then there's the USA Today puzzle series.

The thing about crosswords today is that the novelty has long since worn off.
After a while, it's like Hangman: Who really cares what word the other person
is thinking about?

That's why we expect more from our crossword puzzles than just asking us to
fill in the blanks based on clues. We're looking for additional games-within-games -- puzzles with embedded jokes or entries that require us to massage
the answers a little in order to fit them into place.

One USA Today puzzle book, Nine Minute Crosswords, by Richard Silvestri,
does a superb job of this, so that when I finish one I don't just feel that I've
accomplished a task, I feel as if I've been playing one-on-one with a very witty
opponent.

However, if there are people who can regularly do these puzzles in nine
minutes, I'm certainly not one of them.

*

After having just ridden across half of Poland on trains -- while comfortably
writing chapters of my novel on my laptop the whole way -- I find I am as
much in love with train travel as ever. Not that everything is equal on every
train.

For instance, on my way from Warsaw to Katowice, I was in a train comparable
to first class on a northeast-corridor Amtrak: Wide, comfortable, somewhat
reclinable seats, each with a reasonable-size table. Some of the seats faced
each other, some were placed in rows like church pews. It was pleasant and
comfortable.

The train from Krakow to Warsaw, however, had my wife and me seated across
from each other in one of those six-person compartments, three to a bench.
There was no table -- my laptop really did have to perch on my lap.

The compartment was air-conditioned and the temperature was adjustable, but
unfortunately it was a cool day (autumn apparently begins earlier in Poland
than here) and an elderly couple seated near the window kept asking for the
heat to be pumped up, since they were cold.

I, near the door and with the sun beating in my window, was uncomfortably
warm. But, being an American, I felt the obligation to try to defer to everyone
else so I didn't cause an uptick in anti-American sentiment abroad. I also
didn't speak enough Polish to explain myself. I just sweated a lot while I wrote.

Even with those discomforts, however -- and having to shlep our luggage with
us and find places to stash it where we could keep an eye on it -- the train just
seemed like a more civilized way to travel, at least on a smooth, well-maintained track (which there's a dearth of in America).

As for the luggage situation, my wife and I resolved that we're going to rethink
our luggage on long international trips. We each took one overstuffed suitcase,
but then had to fuss with finding places where they would fit on the trains and
in small foreign cars.

It was especially challenging when we had to lift them onto overhead racks. We
can foresee a time when that won't be possible for us physically, and even now,
if I dropped one on somebody I might find myself up for manslaughter in a
foreign court.

So we're heading for Sharon Luggage sometime in the next few weeks to find
smaller suitcases. The idea is that when we take side trips, we can take only
one small bag for each of us (or even a single bag between us), leaving the rest
-- including the steadily increasing supply of dirty laundry -- behind with the
bellman at our main hotel.

Two rolling bags each won't do the job, however. I've seen people in airports
trying to roll two bags at once and it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work, if for
no other reason than that it makes you so wide as you try to thread through
crowds of travelers. And getting two rolling bags at once down a train aisle?
No thanks.

So we'll come up with a stackable arrangement where one bag rides atop the
other. It's the luggage arrangement we can grow old with.

Meanwhile, out of China comes word of an experimental train that may be able
to bring rail travel up to airplane speeds at a relatively low cost.

Maglev trains have been around for a while. These are trains that don't
actually touch the track -- they use the principle of magnetic repulsion to
remain levitated. This greatly reduces friction -- but not completely. There's
still air resistance to deal with, which has kept maglev trains to speeds not
much higher than standard high-speed rail.

The new Chinese system, however, maintains a partial vacuum in the tube the
train passes through. This allows speeds to rise greatly. The skeptic in me,
however, wonders what happens when there's a leak that suddenly lets air into
the system.

Besides, I like to look out the window -- it's one of the best things about train
travel. Nowadays from airplanes you pretty much see only clouds; it's
relatively rare to get a good clear view of the scenery below, and even then,
people are yelling at you to close the window shade so they can watch the
movie.

Traveling in a vacuum tube doesn't sound to me as if it would offer much of a
view.

Still, a maglev train can be powered by electricity, while airplanes will require
fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Right now, electricity also comes mostly
from fossil fuels, but can also come from renewable sources such as wind and
sunlight and dams.

Trains like this -- as well as converting American rail to electricity system wide,
which is long overdue and should have been one of the primary
accomplishments of Obama's "stimulus" -- can take us a long way toward
switching away from oil before a crisis forces it.

Check out the full article on the Chinese maglev (as well as the interesting criticisms by other readers).

On this day in 1789, Congress established the Treasury Department, with the
Secretary of the Treasury as the third member of the Presidential Cabinet.
Charged with minting money, collecting taxes, and disbursing expenditures,
the Treasury Department has evolved into the magical fairyland where
congressional and presidential wishes are granted ... for a while.

After a four-week siege, on Sept. 2nd 1864, Union troops under Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman entered Atlanta, the last remaining Confederate center of
manufacturing and trade. Confederate General John B. Hood was widely
blamed for failing to hold the city, but in fact he inherited an unwinnable
situation from his predecessor, Joseph Johnston, who was probably the worst
general ever to serve the Confederacy in an important role. Pathologically
unwilling either to exercise command or commit his forces to any action
whatsoever, he made timid Union General McClellan look bold and aggressive.
At least Hood attempted to fight.

From Atlanta, Sherman abandoned his supply lines and marched to Savannah
following a scorched-earth policy. The theory -- supported completely by
Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant -- was that by destroying a significant
percentage of the South's food supply and economic base, Sherman would
exhaust the South's ability to continue to fight, thus shortening the war and, in
the long run, saving many thousands of lives on both sides.

While the South still remembers Sherman as a monster, in fact the strategy
worked -- especially because it largely broke the will of the people, so that they
did not support a continuing guerrilla war after the surrender of the main
armies. America was thus spared the agony that Iraq is going through. Where
Sherman's army went, the people knew they had lost the war and had no
desire to start it up again.

Friday, Sept. 3 -- Treaty of Paris Day

John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris on
this day in 1783, officially ending the American Revolutionary War and
recognizing the United States of America as an independent nation.

*

On this day in 1838, dressed as a sailor and carrying identification papers
borrowed from a retired merchant seaman, Frederick Douglass boarded a train
at Baltimore, Maryland, a slave state, and rode to Wilmington, Delaware (also a
slave state), where he caught a steamboat to the free city of Philadelphia. He
then transferred to a train headed for New York City, where he entered the
protection of the Underground Railway network. Douglass later became a great
orator and one of the leaders of the antislavery struggle.

The Abolitionist movement, of which Douglass was a prominent leader and
spokesman, was and continues to be the victim of vicious slanders -- but in
my opinion their continuous, heroic, faith-based efforts to free slaves
regardless of what the law allowed stand as an example to people who stand for
freedom and justice in any oppressive society. Slavery was one of the two great
shames of America (our treatment of Indians being the other), and until the
Civil War, only the achievements of the abolitionist movement served to wipe
away any part of that stain.

Saturday, Sept. 4 -- Newspaper Carrier Day

This is the anniversary of the hiring of the first "newsboy" in the U.S.,
10-year-old Barney Flaherty, who is said to have answered the following
classified advertisement which appeared on The New York Sun in 1833: "To the
Unemployed -- a number of steady men can find employment by vending this
paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again."

In English, this meant that the Sun would either take you on as an employee or
allow you to buy the paper outright at a discount, sell it yourself at full price,
and keep the difference. With the latter plan, the more you sold, the more you
made, and becoming a paperboy (or "paper carrier" in more recent times) was
the first step on the entrepreneurial road for many thousands of budding
capitalists.

*

Los Angeles, California, was founded on this day in 1781. The official decree
named it "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de
Porciuncula." "El Pueblo" means "village," and it was named for the river
beside which it was built: "River of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of
Porciuncula." Before the village was founded, the Los Angeles River was
commonly called the "Porciuncula River."

And what does "Porciuncula" mean? It comes from the Italian word
"porziuncola," which means "very small parcel (portion) of land." Early in the
career of St. Francis of Assisi, the Benedictine Order allowed him the use of a
tiny, rundown chapel on a very small piece of land; as his fame grew, so did the
fame of the chapel on the porziuncola.

That chapel became the center of celebration of the Feast of the Perdono on
August 2nd in the Church Calendar, so when the Los Angeles River was
discovered by a Spanish expedition on August 2nd in 1769, it was named for
the chapel where that feast day was celebrated.

So the name of Los Angeles -- the largest city and most populous county in
California -- originated with a "very small parcel of land" that St. Francis made
holy to all Christians of his time.

Sunday, Sept. 5 -- National Waffle Week begins

As a family that owns three waffle irons so that nobody has to wait very long
for fresh hot waffles, you can bet that we take National Waffle Week very
seriously.

*

On this day in 1914, Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional
ballplayer for the Providence, Rhode Island, team in the International League --
a minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. Naturally, this did not count
toward his major-league home run record of 714, since surpassed by Hank
Aaron (755), and Barry Bonds (762). The all-time, all-world record (excluding
the American Negro Leagues) for the most home runs by a professional
ballplayer is held by Japanese player Sadaharu Oh, with 868 home runs in his
career.

The Negro Leagues are excluded from this tally because, alas, the record-keeping was not particularly careful or reliable. But Negro League slugger Josh
Gibson's plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame says he hit "nearly 800" home
runs, but this includes exhibition games as well as official league games. In
terms of homers-per-game-played, the best estimates show Gibson to be on a
par with Babe Ruth, with approximately two homers every seven games.

Monday, Sept. 6 -- Labor Day

The first observance of Labor Day was a parade on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York
City, probably organized by Peter McGuire, secretary of a chapter of the
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

While today labor unions -- especially unions representing government
employees -- are criticized for making it impossible to fire nonperforming
workers and for making American-made goods too expensive to compete in the
world market, it is good to remember that labor unions ended the era of
sweatshops and wages so low that a family could starve while everyone of
employable age in the family was working every hour that they could.

Between labor unions and paternalistic employers like Henry Ford, the incomes
of the American working class rose to levels comparable to the middle class,
turning them into customers and greatly increasing the wealth and profitability
of the companies they worked for. Capitalism has acquired its relatively benign
reputation in the U.S. only because labor unions and pro-labor legislation have
kept the free market from driving wages down to unsurvivable levels; and we
lose jobs to foreign workers only because they lack a strong labor movement
and therefore, victimized by the conscienceless free market, provide their labor
at starvation wages.

While I believe that the excesses of the labor unions in America need to be kept
in check in the public interest, I would not want to live in a society where
workers did not have unions and responsible pro-labor government agencies to
watch out for their interests and keep the natural cruelties of capitalism at bay.

Tuesday, Sept. 7 -- Google Day

Who knew that when Sergey Brin and Larry Page incorporated the Internet
search engine company Google in Menlo Park, Calif., in 1998, their little
websearch tool would become a giant with the potential to challenge Microsoft
in its dominance of the software industry -- or that their company name would
become the common English-language verb that it is today?

Brazilian Independence Day. In 1822, Emperor Dom João VI of Portugal
declared Brazil to be an independent nation. Wait, that can't be right -- the
royal ruler of Portugal declared independence from Portugal? Indeed it's so.
During the French invasion of Spain and Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars,
the royal family of Portugal fled to their huge America province of Brazil
(spelled Brasil in Portuguese).

Once he was there, Dom João VI ended the colonial regulations that kept Brazil
from trading openly with other nations, marking the beginning of an era of
prosperity for the colony. When Napoleon was defeated, João decided to stay in
Brazil and make it an independent kingdom equal in status to Portugal.
Naturally, the Portuguese government disapproved and sent troops to bring
him home, where they installed him as a figurehead monarch in a
constitutional government.

But Dom João's son, Pedro, remained in Brazil, where the people and their
elected senate declared him to be "Perpetual Defender and Protector" of their
nation. Pedro declared Brazil's independence near the Ipiranga River in São
Paulo, saying, "By my blood, by my honor, and by God: I will make Brazil free."
He declared that the motto of his revolution would be "Independence or Death,"
which became famous as the Grito do Ipiranga ("Shout of Ipiranga").

After several years of largely bloodless struggle -- including hiring Thomas
Cochrane, the British naval captain who served as the model for the fictional
characters Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, to expel the Portuguese fleet
from various Brazilian ports -- Portugal recognized Brazilian independence in
1825.

Brazil thus became the only American colony to begin its independent
nationhood as a monarchy.